An estimate is a price before the work. The invoice that follows has to say the same thing, or you have billed for something nobody agreed to. Here is what carries across when it is accepted, and what happens if you press convert twice.
An estimate is a price before the work, and it asks for nothing. An invoice is a demand for payment after it, with a due date on it. Same client, often the same lines, and two entirely different documents.
The difference is what each one asks of the person reading it. One asks a question and waits for an answer. The other asks for money, by a date. Everything that goes wrong between the two comes from treating them as one document that changes its mind.
A price with nothing under it is a number in a text message. What makes it a document is that it says what the number is for.
Every row there is a field the app really copies when the estimate becomes the invoice. That is the argument of this whole post, so it is worth being precise about it rather than saying "everything carries across" and leaving you to find out which bits did not.
Three things go missing when a estimate is retyped as an invoice instead of converted into one, and all three change the total.
Rates move, and the app's default moves with them. If you priced the job at one rate in March and bill it in September, the invoice takes the rate off the estimate rather than whatever would be suggested today. The figure the client accepted is the figure they accepted, and a document that quietly re-rates itself is a document you will be arguing about.
A discount, a surcharge, an amount held back. These move the total as much as the lines do, and re-entering them from memory is exactly how a total quietly stops matching the one that was accepted. They carry across with the lines because they are part of the price, not a note about it.
Absent has to mean off rather than unset. An estimate with the terms deliberately turned off becomes an invoice with them still off, instead of printing them again because a fresh document shows them by default. The same goes for the design: the invoice uses the estimate's template and accent color, so what arrives looks like the thing they already said yes to.
Bill something the client never agreed to and the argument is no longer about money. It is about whether you can be trusted with the next job.
Converting the same won job twice raises a second invoice for work that was only done once. That is the failure that costs you the client rather than the invoice, so the estimate records which invoice it became, and the second attempt is refused by number.
The photographs are copied rather than linked, so deleting the estimate afterwards does not empty the gallery on the invoice.
It refuses three ways, and it says which of the three it was: the estimate has gone, there is nothing on it left to bill, or it has already become an invoice. A refusal that does not say why is a refusal you work around by pressing the button again.
Estimates carry a status of their own, because the question they ask has three answers and only one of them turns into money. What is still out, what came back, and what went elsewhere are three different piles, and treating them as one is how a quiet month sneaks up on you.
The reports count them separately from the invoices: so many accepted, so many pending, so many declined, over whatever stretch of the year you ask about. Two of those numbers are about the work you did. The third is about the work you did not win, which is the more useful one and the one nobody keeps.
The estimate and the invoice are drawn by the same renderer, so the document that arrives looks like the one they said yes to.
Both, and a switch in Settings picks which. It is one word with two spellings and half the trades that write these would never say the other one, so a screen headed Estimates is the screen headed Quotes wherever it appears. A word you typed into Custom labels yourself beats the switch on the printed document.
It stays where it is. Its status becomes Accepted, and it records which invoice it turned into. It is the evidence of what was promised, so editing the invoice afterwards cannot reach back and rewrite it.
No, and it says so rather than failing quietly. The second attempt is refused with the number of the invoice that estimate already became. Billing the same won job twice is the mistake that costs you the client rather than the invoice.
Yes, as their own copies rather than as links to the originals. Deleting the estimate afterwards does not empty the invoice's gallery.
The one the estimate used, with the same accent color, unless you change it. There are nine, and the same renderer draws both documents, so the invoice looks like the thing the client already said yes to.
No. Your phone's own mail app opens with the PDF already attached, and you press send. It goes from your address, the reply comes back to you, and nothing leaves the phone unless you send it.
If you charge it, yes, and at the rate that will be on the invoice. Invoice Koi asks which country you work in and prefills the name and the standard rate, which you confirm rather than type from memory. Whether you should be charging it at all is a question for whoever does your books.
The estimate and the invoice are the same document twice, and the second one should not be retyped from the first. Both are drawn by the same renderer, estimates are not counted at all, and invoices are free up to a hundred a year.
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